Secondhand
by m.jules
Summary: River and Mal have a conversation sometimes with words about wants and wishes and handmedown hearts.


**Title:** Second Hand  
**Author:** m.jules  
**Summary:** River and Mal have a conversation (sometimes with words) about wants and wishes and hand-me-down hearts.  
**Rating:** PG-ish for implications  
**Author's Notes:** **unanon** asked for this in a vague, roundabout way, but that's probably only because she didn't know what she was getting. :-D This hasn't been beta'd, and I haven't even read back through it. It's the definition of 'raw.'  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine; Joss's.

* * *

She was in his arms before he even saw her coming, all flying hair and fluttering dress, and the breath rushed out of his lungs with her impact against his chest.

"Hey now, what seems to be the matter?" he asked, pushing her back to get a look at her. She ducked her head, hiding behind her hair, and when he reached out to brush the strands away, her arm came up to block him. That was when he saw it -- the streak of red across her palm like a rip in the firmament.

"What's this?" he asked, keeping the danger in his voice quiet for fear of alarming her. He caught her wrist to keep her still, looking at the mark for himself.

"Simon," she answered, tugging to get loose, but he only tightened his grip and she ceased struggling.

"Yeah, you oughta get him to take a look at it," Mal agreed, prepared to relinquish her to her brother's able care as usual, but she shook her head. He noticed the way she bit her lip, the sad but cognizant look in her eyes. She looked so old at that moment that he almost felt young.

"No," she whispered. "Simon did this."

His mind spun faster than he could keep up with it, spitting out a thousand possibilities per second as her words sank in. _She's crazy. She's lying. She's making it up. The doc is sick. He's gone mad. He finally lost it._ None of them lodged in his mind as permanent, though, except the final one that rang clearly and loudly, like the dinner bell on his momma's ranch back on Shadow. _Somethin' ain't right._

"What do you mean, Simon did this?" he asked, his hand still curled around her wrist, loose enough now that she could pull free if she wanted, but she didn't.

"He thinks he's right, but he isn't," she sighed. "He thinks he knows what's good for me but all he does is what they do, what they told him to do." Her eyes grew wide and she became more distressed as she spoke, gesturing with her free hand, her voice picking up in pitch and tempo. "He's wrong, I know he is. His conclusion is fallacious, his equation is flawed. The formula has an anomaly that is fatal to the--"

"Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa." He shook his head in wry amusement. "Hold up there, little girl. No need for all those big words."

She smiled with a trace of embarrassment and glanced down at her feet, her wounded hand clenching and unclenching gently in his grasp. "Sorry," she murmured, her eyes sparkling with self-depracating humor. "I forgot for a second."

He let it go with the ease and practice of someone who is used to efficiency, who takes the most expedient route to a solution if at all possible, and gets on with his question-asking. "Now how did Simon do this?" he prompted, wondering if there'd been an accident, if Simon had been attempting to make an incision for one of his experiments -- _No, he's researching, not experimenting _ -- and she'd panicked and flailed, slicing open her hand in the process.

"You were right the first time," she whispered, and he tilted his head, inviting her to explain. "They _are_ experiments. He doesn't like to think of them that way either, but he's fascinated by me the same way they are. He can't help it; he's a doctor. He likes to know how things work and nobody knows how I work."

Mal frowned, bothered by this development. On the one hand, he didn't want to believe the girl's implications. He'd never been particularly fond of Simon, but the doc was a nice addition to the crew and Kaylee had a soft spot for him. He didn't like messing with something that made Kaylee happy. On the other, however, was the fact that he trusted River more than he'd cop to on a normal day. Her seemingly nonsense ramblings had proved relevant more than once, and though she could be cryptic, he'd come to see the value in giving her the benefit of the doubt.

"Don't worry so much," River said suddenly, with a sympathetic smile. "He hasn't turned mad-scientist or anything. He's just... curious. Wants to know things." She shrugged, wiggling the fingers on the injured hand that he still held gingerly in his own. "Like you."

"What do you mean, like me?" he asked, trying to forestall his offense until he knew what she meant. As far as he knew, he'd never been interested in cutting her open to see what made her tick. She was how she was and that was the way of it.

"You want to know things, too. Different things than Simon does, different than _they_ do. Want to know about me, want to know how I taste, want to know how I move, how I sound and feel." She slipped her arm from his numb fingers, sliding her hand down until her palm rested against his, the drying blood sticky between them. "You wonder why you think that way about me. Keeps you up at night sometimes, thinking about how you shouldn't think those things, shouldn't want to know. Shouldn't want to taint me when I'm already broken."

She smiled, a sad tilt of her lips, and tapped her fingertips lightly against his. "Wish I knew how to teach you. Wish I could learn. Maybe I used to know but I can't remember... but sometimes I think I didn't know, ever."

He swallowed past a dry throat, all his panicked emotions buzzing in his mind. She was right; she did intrigue him. More than Inara's lacquered beauty that beckoned him, River's raw, fragile, _needing_ soul invited him to play savior. She appealed to his nobility; the cursed maiden awaiting the wakening, healing kiss of a warrior.

He had no illusions about himself, no thoughts of being a hero or a knight, but she needed a peculiar kind of rescuing and he'd found slaying her particular dragons to be to his liking. He'd never told Simon why he'd made the decision to let the two of them stay, aside from the sheer practicality of having a physician on board when they couldn't exactly go knocking on Alliance doors looking for competant medical help, and field dressings weren't good enough for some of the injuries incurred by some of his crew.

He suspected River knew, though, and at times he thought Inara might have an inkling. He could never say no to being needed, and if anyone had ever needed him, that beautiful, broken refugee did. She'd lodged in his brain like a stubborn saddle burr from the moment he'd opened the cryopod. He remembered his first thought, his first impulse and desire, had been to kill the arrogant young doctor and cradle the girl against his chest and tell her it was okay, that no one was ever going to hurt her again.

Then the situation had changed before his eyes and he hadn't been the one to hold her. He hadn't been the one to tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of, that she was safe. That was the place her brother occupied jealously, and Mal had nothing more to do but stand back and be a big damn hero when the opportunity presented itself.

He was redundant in River's life but he couldn't make himself step out completely. There might be a place her brother couldn't occupy... there might be a place for him yet.

She'd been silent while his mind whirled and then finally settled, and now she smiled again and whispered, "I think it starts with a kiss. We're already holding hands."

The words jolted him out of the spell he was under and he flinched, taking a step back mentally, drawing his emotions back behind all the barracades he learned to put up in a valley called Serenity, and she frowned.

"Don't leave me," she pleaded in a soft voice that sounded like a little girl and a jaded, grown-up woman all at once. "Not when we're so close..."

He squeezed her hand gently before bringing her injured palm to his lips and pressing a kiss to the torn skin. He tasted blood when he pulled away, and the salt of her sweat and skin, and her eyes focused on his lips in breathless wonder. She reached for his face with her free hand, her fingers dancing gracefully over his skin, and sighed, closing her eyes in contentment.

"You don't have lipstick on you collar," she whispered conspiratorially. "But you have my shade of red on your lips."

She leaned up quickly on her toes and pressed her mouth quickly to his, tasting her own blood in the kiss. "Tell me when you want to know everything," she breathed at his cheek, and he nodded, feeling the gentle tickle of her hair against his nose.

She turned to go, her hand finally leaving his, and paused at the stairs that led up out of the hold, looking at him over her shoulder. "I'm not as broken as I look, Captain," she grinned. "You can get some sleep now; no more guilt."

He quirked an answering grin in her direction and nodded. "I'll have to do that," he chuckled, and she turned and bounded up the stairs so lightly that the metal didn't even tremble with her weight. Without a sound and before he could blink twice, she was gone as quickly as she'd appeared, and he was left with the taste of blood in his mouth and a burning tingle on his palm where a second-hand streak of red painted his lifeline from top to bottom. 


End file.
